Yesterday, it snowed about 7 inches, which is the most snow young Edward has ever seen in his life. Unfortunately it’s also pretty cold; it was about 18 degrees at the warmest point in the day today, which is fortunately when I… but I’m getting ahead of myself. I went out to shovel a few […]

I’ve been asked, what do the sock batts spin up like? Here’s an example using one batt of the Crown Jewels Luxury Sock Blend (superwash merino and tussah silk). Top: the batts. Middle: the single. Bottom: the 2-ply sock yarn after washing. This is a 2-ply yarn; the skein came to 145 yards, and weighs […]

Googling around for something or other, I ran across this link: FRANQUEMONT, Chris, The Chinchero Center for Traditional Culture, Cultural Survival 6.4, October 1982. I’d just like to say that typing in a reference and putting a link in it also gave me a moment of torturous flashback to years of parsing those with Perl, […]

Finally! Fresh sock batts up on eBay, and 8 blend samplers as well: 4 each sock blends, 4 each luxury blends. What’s more, the February doldrums call for a revisiting of my November super-specials: $25 gets you free shipping, $50 gets you free shipping and a 5% discount, $100 gets you free shipping and a […]

So, what am I the furthest behind on for January? Sock batts, which I’m actually behind on since December. I blame the whole Tooth Saga, which I am not going to get into in detail for fear of causing other dentistophobes to squick to death. Here’s a little bit of what will be coming up […]

The most Abby’s put on a top whorl yet.

Here’s an 8-minute video showing the very basics of drop spindle spinning, using a low whorl spindle made from hardware store materials (a dowel and a drawer pull) and some midgrade commercial wool fiber. Multiple angles, closer view of hand actions, hopefully functional descriptions of the process! This is aimed at helping out anybody who […]

On learning to weave and spin

Oh, my poor poor productivity, such as it is this month! Last week it was ravaged by oral surgery, and today that continues as in about an hour I head out to have all my wisdom teeth removed. I’m afraid my family has also suffered, as I’ve been pretty cranky about stuff like my mouth […]

Someone asked me the other day whether or not I ever spin non-traditional yarns. Why yes, in fact, I do. But the thing is, I don’t use a lot of novelty yarn; it just doesn’t serve any real purpose for me. For the most part, I spin to produce yarn that I want to use. […]